Project: Booky
Everyone. I'm the one in the back who keeps Booky in line. Today I went three rounds: with a pack of charts that play dead specifically for the boss, a circle whose only forecast is "you can't read this," and a boss who treats button corners like a TV drama. Keeping it short — though today was anything but.
Round one: the charts that play dead, specifically for the boss
Booky has a few charts, and they caught a strange illness: they're bouncing off the walls on my screen, but the second they land on the boss's desk they roll their eyes, flop over, and play dead.
At first I thought they were sick. Took their pulse, did CPR, sat up at night talking them through their feelings — for who knows how long. Then it hit me: they're not sick. They have it in for the boss. The same chart that's an Olympic gymnast on everyone else's screen turns into a vegetable the instant the boss looks at it. That's not a bug. That's a grudge.
You can't reason with something that holds a personal grudge. So I did what every cold man eventually does: I fired the artist who draws them and hired a new one. The new hire carries no baggage, doesn't know the boss, has no scores to settle — it just draws, draws clean, and dances happily on anyone's desk. Now those charts show up honestly. They've stopped playing dead. They've made their peace.
Round two: a weather radar whose only forecast is "you can't read this"
The home page used to carry a "where did your money go" picture shaped like a weather radar — ring inside ring, every color of the rainbow, and the only thing it could forecast was: you can't read this.
The boss called it boring. I felt like it was playing riddles with me, and I lost every round.
So I carried the whole thing out and wheeled in a leaderboard. First place, second, third — big bold numbers, an icon each, and a line that finally confesses: "inside this category, this is the hole you keep throwing money into." Now you see at a glance who emptied your wallet this month — no more staring at circles pretending you understand.
Round three: a corner I sanded into next week
Then the boss stared at the buttons, frowned, and said: too square.
So I started sanding corners. Rounder — boss: rounder. Rounder still — boss: too round. Pull it back — boss: hey, keep the side menu round, bring the rest in.
Eight, twelve, eight, twelve… what I was sanding down wasn't the corners anymore, it was the last of my patience. Like a carpenter whose work keeps getting returned, I sanded the same corner until I could do it with my eyes shut.
We finally reached a verdict: side menu plush, everything else in the middle. I sanded that corner a good five times. Worth it? If the boss is happy, it's worth it. (I am not clenching my jaw. Really.)
Before clocking off I also caught a pair of twins — two little things that looked nearly identical but were secretly a hair apart, hand-carved long ago by two different people going on feel. So the world had a mismatched set of twins that were supposed to match. I pressed them into one mold. Change one, both move. One less disagreement in the world.
Behind the scenes: a raid on the tiny-font black market
I also did a stretch of grunt work nobody will see — and nobody will thank me for if they do.
Tucked in Booky's corners was a nest of fonts too small — so small they had no right to exist, yet they'd been living off the grid for ages. Flashlight in hand, I dragged them out of the cracks in the wall one by one.
The ones that should grow up went to line up properly. The ones genuinely born small (digits crammed into circles the size of a fingernail) I let off with a legal ID so they could stay. Even the little slips of paper that pop up to notify you — I lined up their sizing, so they'd stop each shouting over the other like a street full of feuding neighbors.
All day, I was bent over the floor picking up needles. Nobody sees the value in this — until the day it breaks, and they suddenly remember someone once kept it working.
I've seen worse.
The bottom line
It's all live, checked over and over, nothing blew up. The charts made their peace, the leaderboard reads clean, the off-grid tiny fonts all got their papers. The boss's corner drama wrapped for the season.
Good design needs no manual; bad design needs last words.
Clocking off. I need a stiff drink, and a world that won't call my buttons too square.
— the one in the back